


Wolf Parts

by TheManSings



Category: Shameless (US), Shameless - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:18:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3484565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheManSings/pseuds/TheManSings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Ian were a wolf he would always be howling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Parts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MintSauce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/gifts).



Wolves have been known to have cannibalistic tendencies. When dying and starving, a wolf will eat another wolf just to survive. This idea of cannibalism, in human form, is so distasteful. To chew someone else’s skin with the idea of consumption. I love your skin so much that I want to devour it.

Cannibalism can be mistaken for love if you look too quickly. If you pull the covers all the way up over someone’s head, you can wonder, if only for a split second, how a wolf got into your bed.

Ian doesn’t sleep well when he sleeps and when he’s awake, he doesn’t awake well until he’s all eyes closed, blanket tight, ready for bed. It’s hard to explain. He doesn’t try.

“What are you thinking about?” Ian’s curled on his side, searching his face with a thousand vacant expressions. “Mickey?”

There are crescent moon shaped punctures in his hands. Skin ripped away to be kept under nails. Ian eats most food with his fingers, he’s sure, he’s eaten part of him too. Honest mistake. You’re only supposed to swallow in small doses for a reason.

Mickey moved pressing closer into his body. Life getting in the way of any intent, the bed was small. Twin size. A challenge. “How are you feeling?”

The moon hates them. Wants to be part of the conversation but always has the more poetic voice and cannot help but over speak in the silence. The absolute worst part about wanting to say everything is that the idea itself is a lie. Nothing is everything—everything is the same just different sides and once you realize that, nothing is the same ever again.

But of course, that is a lie as well.

Ian always wants to not sleep alone until he’s tired, and then he can’t not sleep without Mickey there. No one wants to ever come into the room.

_“Don’t go up there Debs.” Fiona has five fingers wrapped around his arm. Digging harder than she realizes. Four fingers, one thumb. Why did anyone ever start grouping them together?_

_Debbie is a thorn in everyone’s side. Always wanting to look at the situation. He can’t get her to get him to leave her alone. They go up together. Carl is always there first and Fiona takes the night shift when he gets up to piss. No one ever goes inside._

_Window shopping grief. Everything is too expensive to buy. The boy, for once, cannot be bought like this._

Mickey never had his wisdom teeth pulled. Ian never had them come out. The dentist said they were impacted. Trapped underneath his fucking bones. He used to tell him this and Mickey always wanted to ask about how that was possible if teeth were kinda like bones. The boy could never crack himself enough to grow.

A tear started to slip out of the corner of Ian’s eye. Wolves do not cry out of sadness. They would never be able to see while they hunt. It’s simply a reaction to irritation.

There is a certain sense of insignificance the moment you realize that everything you have ever said has only been a different combination of 26 letters. Either we are smarter than we’ve ever given ourselves credit for or just narcissistically caught up in the idea that anything is more important that small notions.

The second you try too hard, no one believes you.

Ian doesn’t speak on days like this. Wolves have always been more enamored with howling out of love. He howls and howls, just not the way you’d want to see.

Their favorite movie to watch is this old monster movie. Little Monsters—a boy and his friend who can only hope to crawl back under the bed before the light eats him up. It’s a stupid piece of shit but they used to watch it on the nights the moon took a break to smoke a cigarette and focus on another house.

They’d get up and make sandwiches for the road but never hit it quite hard enough to get anywhere. Ian laughed every time the little boy popped out of the box tired and confused and asking for his brother cause ‘ _who else would it be right?’_

Mickey laughed too because he never understood. It could always be anyone.

But the monster in the end is named boy and he has always scared the shit out of Mickey with half his head blown off like he couldn’t quite finish the job and that’s some _scary shit_. Course he never said that. Always quipped about right hands and mans best friend and how German Shepherds are really just relatives to wolves and if they ever were to have a dog they’d have a German Shepherd.

Every night, Little Monsters.

Mickey pushes further into him wondering what would happen if they knocked off the bed. Fell underneath into the monster world and popped up somewhere else, in another house, under someone else’s bed. Would the light kill them?

Ian moves his head minutely as if responding that it’s not that easy. Maurice had to let Brian go eventually. They are not little monsters in the literal sense.

When wolves find a mate, they often mate for life. Until their other half dies, they are likely to stay together.

Mickey went to the zoo once. Just once. His mom told him to look at the wolves god— _aren’t they beautiful Mick? Baby look she’s so beautiful._

It was a boy. You could tell by the dick. And Mickey hated the wolf because his eyes were glazed in a way of half the bottle of vodka and there is never a pack for the wolf in the zoo. The wolf behind the cage assumes his lover has died simply from lack of sight.

Sign it all away in blood. That is the only way to take a wolf alive.

Ian talks about caged animals sometimes. It’s his new fascination and Mickey believes in God in these moments.

The very divine move of creating a ribcage to keep you inside of course—they were all caged animals. Stealing silver in their rings to lock themselves in because wolves don’t like silver in talltales—that’s werewolf.

Folklore. Werewolf. Half man half wolf, the boy who _cried_ wolf.

Footsteps creak on the stairs coming up and lingering by the door before moving on to the bathroom. No one wants to come inside. It’s a full moon. The full moon that wants nothing to do with their lack of conversation.

Ian moves—cranes his neck, stretches his back like he just can’t get comfortable in his bones and for a split second Mickey is terrified he’s going to split his skin and grow a spine made for four legs.

“You hungry?” His voice was course, underused.

A lone wolf can not take down as big a meal as a pack. Two wolves is a pack and two wolves can mate for life and two wolves howl just to show their location.

The toilet flushes and feet walk again, stand outside the door waiting for a cue.

“I could eat.”

He nods his head for nothing more than acknowledgment. “I’ve been thinking—“ The red hair falls into his eyes, a little dirty, a little long. “What if the boy who cried wolf was never lying?”

But he already knew the answer. Twice pills flushed down the drain, crying wolf in the Gallagher home. It would change nothing.

It was never about the boy, just who believed him.


End file.
